


An All Souls Night to Remember

by beetle



Category: Original Work
Genre: All Souls' Day, Celebrations, Dio de la Muerte, First Dates, First Kiss, First Meetings, Ghosts, Holding Hands, M/M, Parades, Pre-Slash, Teen Romance, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 07:45:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10079999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: Renny Rodriguez goes to aDia de los Muertosparade.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Notes/Warnings: None.

David Reynolds-Rodriguez stepped out of Saint Mary’s back exit, with what was almost a spring in his light and measured step. He paused just outside the automatic door, eyes closed and his wan, grey-brown face turned up and west toward the fiery glow of the setting sun—how he’d missed the feeling of sunlight on his skin—then, he murmured “sorry,” when a whistling man so tall and large, he had to inch his way past even _Renny’s_ small, bony body, exited the hospital, as well.

 

After watching the man, who was dressed in a bright-blue zoot-suit and matching fedora, shuffle around the corner of the Journey Diagnostics Lab attached to Saint Mary’s, Renny moved on, as well. Crossed the street, and made his way through the parking lot and down the hill.

 

As he went, the sunlight on his back didn’t warm him, exactly . . . but it nonetheless made him feel stronger. By the time he reached the bottom of the gentle incline, a tentative smile had stretched and curved his ashen-colored lips.

 

It was his day—his _night_ —and he was _free_. He was free.

 

#

 

On such an unseasonably warm October evening, the parade was, of course, well attended by both marchers and spectators.

 

As Renny slowly approached the four-person-deep crowd at the intersection of Palos Verde Way and Mariposa Street, he grinned at the floats and marchers crossing the cordoned-off intersection—at the children leaning against or trying to duck under the sawhorses that kept back spectators. Their parents, half-annoyed and half-indulgent, did their best to restrain the little and not-so-little ones in their care.

 

Renny wistfully remembered his own childhood, not _that_ long ago, and doing the same thing during parades. Especially _this_ parade.

 

He remembered his poor, beleaguered _abuelita_ holding his hand as he all but begged to be let free to run out and join the marchers—after all, his own normally caramel-colored face had been carefully painted bone-white, as well as Mars-black at the eyes and nose, and to accent lips and cheekbones . . . he’d looked just like one of the parade marchers he’d so envied, so it was only right that he go join them in celebrating the Day. . . .

 

His smile turning a bit sad, though not exactly regretful, Renny paused his perambulation just beyond the back-most row of spectators, shoving his cold hands in the shallow pockets of his flimsy, blue paper pants. The lightweight grey t-shirt, one of many that’d kept him warm during his long tenure at Saint Mary’s, wasn’t up to the job, anymore, through no fault of its own. A cool zephyr seemed to follow Renny wherever he went since the sun had dipped below the horizon.

 

Now that it’d taken the last of its remaining, roseate glow with it, that unseasonable warmth had been replaced by the true chill of fall, which was amplified by the wind that seemed to only bother Renny.

 

Heaving a weary, unintentionally-loud sigh, Renny hung his head and rocked forward on his toes, then back his heels. Back and forth, unnoticed by any of the awed and parade-dazzled crowed just a few feet away, save for the curious, unafraid glance of a colorfully made-up toddler on someone’s shoulders, who drooled and smiled and waved.

 

Renny smiled and waved back. But he didn’t drool.

 

Then the toddler was looking back at the passing parade, as the man on whose shoulders she sat bounced and pointed out the oncoming float with its flowers and multicolored swag.

 

Long-buried feelings and that _wind_ cut through Renny like a knife and he shivered, hunching his thin, narrow shoulders, prepared to turn away from both crowd and parade—such was not for him anymore, he supposed, experiencing his first pangs of regret in many years—when someone in the crowd turned around suddenly and looked _right at him_.

 

 _Saw_ him.

 

Renny blinked at the instant, intent eye-contact as the person—a young man of just under average height (which still made him taller than Renny), wearing a charcoal-colored suit-jacket with an orange flower in the lapel; white beads strung around his neck; white, dangling earrings shaped like little skulls peeked out from the wild, wind-blown mess of his straight, grown-out black hair; and his face was painted white, but for black hollows at eyes, under his cheekbones, and simulating lines of demarcation between the “teeth” drawn on his lips—quirked a wry, sharp smile at him.

 

Startled, Renny once more smiled back and even waved. But he did _not_ drool . . . even though if he _had_ , it would’ve been for quite a different reason than mirroring a toddler’s behavior.

 

The young man turned fully toward him, pivoting on his Converse All-Stars-shod heels. His own hands were shoved in the pockets of his dark-blue skinny jeans, and the bright-white t-shirt that accentuated his lean, muscular chest was coming untucked.

 

“ _Buenas noches,_ ” he said in a surprisingly deep, low voice, after giving Renny a measuring once-over that ended at Renny’s face again.

 

Blushing so hotly, it almost mitigated the evening chill, Renny looked down at the younger man’s black sneakers. The laces were a violent orange. “ _B-Buenas noches, señor_.”

 

“ _¿Cómo estás esta tarde?”_

 

Blushing again, for an added reason now—his poor Spanish—Renny shrugged. “Um. Fine. But my Spanish is a little, um, rusty? _¿Habla usted Inglés?_ ”

 

“Very well, actually,” the young man confirmed with a thick accent and mild amusement as he stepped closer to Renny and away from the inattentive crowd. “Are you enjoying the parade, so far?”

 

“Oh! Yes,” Renny said, chuckling nervously, his face still aflame. “I . . . I haven’t been to a Day of the Dead in so long, I’d forgotten how, um . . . how colorful and interesting they are,” he finished lamely. _Colorful and interesting_ seemed terribly inadequate to describe the spectacle before him. “A-Are you?”

 

“Very much so, yes,” the young man said. “And not just because this is the only night such as us get to walk the world, once more.”

 

Renny froze in place, his smile becoming a rictus as that wind whipped about and through him more forcefully than ever. Renny’s loose, shoulder-length brown curls whipped briefly into his face. “S-Such as us,” he intoned breathlessly as the other young man—holding out his rather large hand for shaking—leaned a bit closer to Renny, almost in a bow.

 

“Yes. Such as us . . . unless,” the young man frowned suddenly, his hand dropping back to his side. The bright glint in his abyss-dark eyes seemed to dim and mellow, even as his voice lowered and softened. “You _do_ realize, do you not, my friend? You understand and _know_ that you’re. . . .”

 

“Living impaired? Yes,” Renny agreed, still breathless. “Been that way for years,” he added, then he realized something quite curious: “So’re you.”

 

“Yes,” the young man also agreed, smiling a little, once more. This smile was less sharp than his previous one—friendly, somehow, despite the detailed skull-makeup. “My name is Jacopo. And you are?”

 

“Renny. Um, David Reynolds-Rodriguez,” Renny replied, reaching out to take Jacopo’s hand. He hesitated at the last second but then clasped it firmly, gasping at the rush of warmth that shot from Jacopo’s hand, to his own hand, then to the rest of him, in the space of split-seconds. It felt even better than the remembered warmth of sun’s setting. “B-But . . . but everyone called me _Renny_. You know . . . back when I was alive.”

 

“Hmm.” Jacopo’s soft smile slowly turned into a grin as nearly half a minute passed, and he and Renny were still shaking absently, their grips still firm. “Well, Renny. No one called me _Jac_ , but . . . I think I might like it if _you_ did.”

 

“Oh . . . okay. Um, _Jac_.” Blushing again, Renny bit his lip. “You’re the first, um, dead person, who’s talked to me since I died.”

 

“Really?” Off Renny’s eager nod, Jac’s smile turned debonair and charming, and he did, indeed, bow slightly at the waist. “I am honored, then, to be your first.”

 

“Oh!” Renny said, turning red enough that it probably showed up under his caramel complexion.

 

And there they stood: two dead boys, not really _shaking_ hands anymore, as much as _holding_ hands, grinning at each other with gazes as locked-tight as their pale, dead hands.

 

For long moments, they stayed like that, warmth and feeling passing between them as whole, silent conversations. Then, behind them, the crowd cheered and they both turned to look at a particularly magnificent Reaper-decked-out-in-flowers float as it made its sedate way down Palos Verde Way.

 

When the float had finally passed from sight, followed by the hoots and applause of the crowd, Renny and Jac shared a glance and a laugh. Then Jac, switching his grasp of Renny’s smaller hand from his left hand to his right, turned them back to face the crowd.

 

“Come march with me?” he asked Renny quietly, tugging the other boy forward and forward, until, barely visible anymore, even to the once more watching toddler, the pair passed through the crowd— _literally_ passed through several unaware living folk—and the sawhorses, and finally stepped out onto the parade route.

 

Down the street, back toward the start of the parade, a gaggle of teenagers and twenty-somethings that Renny could see a small marching band through, caught sight of him and Jac. They instantly started waving and hailing the pair, urging them to come join them.

 

“I . . . would love to march with you, Jac,” Renny said, smiling brightly and letting the other boy lead him toward the other the dead in their dead finery—one young woman had a wide, perfectly round hole clean through her torso and 19th century _duquesa_ ball-gown—while squeezing his fingers and hand companionably.

 

A few minutes later, arm in arm with his . . . with _Jac_ , and side by side with his new compatriots, Renny Rodriguez marched in the Dia de los Muertos parade for the first time, cheered on by spectators both living—though only the toddlers actually _saw_ him and his new friends—and the few dead who’d chosen not to march this year.

 

Among _their_ ashen, delighted faces, he saw a few he recognized—his childhood rival, Charlie O’Connor, who’d died of leukemia; his eighth-grade teacher, Mrs. Bracie, dead in a car collision with a drunk driver; and a man who looked _exactly_ like and could have very well _been_ Jim Morrison. . . .

 

As he waved and strolled along Palos Verde Way, surrounded and escorted by the dead, he could only hope one of the watching faces along the way would be his _abuelita’s_. _That_ would make the best night of his death absolutely _perfect_.

 

Though it was _already_ pretty close to being so.

 

“Happy All Souls Night, Renny,” Jac leaned in close to whisper, his cool lips brushing Renny’s lukewarm cheek. Renny blushed yet again and returned the buss with a peck on the corner of Jac’s made-up mouth. The other boy smelled faintly of greasepaint and clean sweat . . . and less faintly of morning mist and wood-smoke.

 

“Happy All Souls Night, Jac.”

   

END

**Author's Note:**

> Written with this random photo as a prompt: (https://www.flickr.com/photos/simutis1/2997274473/in/photostream/)
> 
> And come see me on [The Tumbles](http://beetle-ships-it-all.tumblr.com)!


End file.
